


Manifest Destiny in Reverse

by sarken



Category: Real News RPF
Genre: F/F, F/M, TSP Comment Fic, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-04
Updated: 2012-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-29 09:18:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/318296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarken/pseuds/sarken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rachel, back on her island of California.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Manifest Destiny in Reverse

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by newsitorloseit's "Islands," which is available on FNFF. The title is a quote from the story.

When it's over, she moves back to her island.

The subway lines still snake along her inner arm, indelible, foreign, like someone else's veins bleeding through her skin. There is no way to erase New York and the life she lived out there. She tells herself the east coast doesn't matter, not out here on _Insula California_.

The women she sleeps with, they all trace the boundaries on her back, the hard, certain lines of a place that will never exist. Some of them go east, their fingers ghosting over the faded lines of mountain ranges. The ones who focus on the compass, those are the women with whom relationships last longest.

No one touches the east coast, the flat, blank expanse of her right scapula. Everyone knows what happened out there; they all say it doesn't matter. And it doesn't, not really, but no one touches her and there are nights Rachel lies in the dark and traces her subway lines. She can feel her pulse beneath her stop, an accident, a poorly planned design, and she hates it.

He comes to California once, boldly stepping foot onto her island. When he leaves, she takes her shirt off for a stranger, pays them to ink _HC SVNT DRACONES_ into her skin.


End file.
